August DVB-T210

derp derp · 2014-02-11T22:48:40+00:00

Hi. Was wondering if this was compatible with tvheadend as there's not much information from users about this device. Does anyone have one? Is it working wel...

Paul Williams

Everything has been pretty solid for approx 1 week now that I addressed the 2nd issue of muxes being identified as 0.25mhz off from my other tuner.

This is with the standard media_build (not including the patch mentioned earlier in this thread) and 4.0.11 firmware installed.

Ben Rometsch

Ugh - compiling media_build with Raspbian looks like it's beyond my knowledge - really frustrating! If anyone has simple instructions on how to do that I would really appreciate it! For the record I'm getting this:

make[2]: Leaving directory '/root/linuxtv/media_build/linux'
./scripts/make_kconfig.pl /lib/modules/4.1.19-v7+/build /lib/modules/4.1.19-v7+/build 1
Preparing to compile for kernel version 4.1.19
File not found: /lib/modules/4.1.19-v7+/build/.config at ./scripts/make_kconfig.pl line 33, <IN> line 4.
Makefile:369: recipe for target 'allyesconfig' failed
make[1]:* [allyesconfig] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory '/root/linuxtv/media_build/v4l'
Makefile:26: recipe for target 'allyesconfig' failed
make:* [allyesconfig] Error 2

can't select all drivers at ./build line 490.

I think I need to install the kernel headers/sources but googling it is not coming back with simple solutions!

Olli Salonen

Hi Ben,

Update your media_build first:

https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-media@vger.kernel.org/msg102197.html

Cheers,
-olli

Ben Rometsch

I dont think that's the issue - I'm still getting the error:

https://gist.github.com/dabeeeenster/e1d5b45a5069665531c3716594c548fc

I think it's related to not having the kernel sources from Raspbian but I cant figure out how to do that, which seems crazy but there you go! Is anyone else running Raspbian and able to provide instructions?

Adam Bowen

I successfully cross-compiled media_build for raspbian, but that was before the stick was supported by the media_build that was included with the kernel package. As soon as the kernel included it, I stopped building it myself, because to be honest, it was a pain in the arse. Whenever I updated the kernel I'd have to remember to re-install my media_build version.

Are you on Jesse or Wheezy? The only issue I had recently (which I've also mentioned previously in this thread) was the need to update my firmware to the .11 version when I upgraded my Pi2 to Jesse. Before that, on Wheezy, I used the .4 version. Both have been rock solid on my setup with two sticks plugged in.

If you are still intent upon building your own media_build, I can send you my notes on cross-compiling it later on (I've not got access to them at the minute).

Ben Rometsch

Hi Adam.

Thanks for the help. Maybe I'm confused - are you saying that I dont need to compile anything and just run what's set in the default raspbian packages? I'm on Wheezy.

I am using these drivers:

# dmesg | grep si21
[ 4.079391] si2168 3-0064: Silicon Labs Si2168 successfully attached
[ 4.109042] si2157 4-0060: Silicon Labs Si2147/2148/2157/2158 successfully attached
[ 25.540878] si2168 3-0064: found a 'Silicon Labs Si2168-B40'
[ 25.545609] si2168 3-0064: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-demod-si2168-b40-01.fw'
[ 26.127536] si2168 3-0064: firmware version: 4.0.4
[ 26.139483] si2157 4-0060: found a 'Silicon Labs Si2158-A20'
[ 26.140838] si2157 4-0060: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-tuner-si2158-a20-01.fw'

[ 27.178642] si2157 4-0060: firmware version: 2.1.6

Maybe it's worth me trying 4.0.11? What version fo dvb-tuner-si2158-a20-01.fw are you running?

Thanks!

Olli Salonen

Hi Ben,

The printout above does not tell which version of the driver you are using. It tells which version of the firmware you are using - ie. 4.0.4 for Si2168 and 2.1.6 for Si2158.

- Driver: piece of code in the linux kernel

- Firmware: piece of code that is loaded to the chip when the driver is initializing

To update the driver you need to change the kernel or build media_build.

To update the firmware you need to change the files in /lib/firmware.

You can try out different firmware with your current driver - the driver supports multiple versions of the firmware.

There's no way for you to compile a different firmware. You can just take the file and place it in /lib/firmware. You can try various drivers and modify/compile them yourself.

Adam Bowen

Hi Ben,

Yes, well, that's what I do anyway. If you are on wheezy and the versions of the firmware you're running are not working for you then maybe your problem lies elsewhere. I originally had both of my sticks plugged in to a powered hub (along with the power end of a Y-cable for a 2.5" drive), and I did experience lock ups. I switched them both to be directly plugged in to the Pi2 (using the little USB extension leads that come with them) and those problems went away. I originally thought I'd have power problems if I plugged them direct, but that wasn't the case (the 2.5" drive is still in the hub). How have you got your stick plugged in?

That said, it may be worth switching to the 4.0.11 and 2.1.9 versions of the firmware. Chris gave concise instructions for getting them from the OpenELEC repo in his previous post:

https://tvheadend.org/d/1695-august-dvb-t210?r=21206#message-21206

or you can just download them from here:

https://github.com/OpenELEC/dvb-firmware/tree/master/firmware

Adam

Graham H

Out of interest, Adam, with that setup does the USB ever choke (ie data overload, not power overload)? I would imagine recording a HD channel off both of the sticks at once and writing to the 2.5" disk would be a stretch, for example.

Just wondering...

Graham

Ben Rometsch

Adam Bowen wrote:
> Hi Ben,
>
> Yes, well, that's what I do anyway. If you are on wheezy and the versions of the firmware you're running are not working for you then maybe your problem lies elsewhere. I originally had both of my sticks plugged in to a powered hub (along with the power end of a Y-cable for a 2.5" drive), and I did experience lock ups. I switched them both to be directly plugged in to the Pi2 (using the little USB extension leads that come with them) and those problems went away. I originally thought I'd have power problems if I plugged them direct, but that wasn't the case (the 2.5" drive is still in the hub). How have you got your stick plugged in?
>
> That said, it may be worth switching to the 4.0.11 and 2.1.9 versions of the firmware. Chris gave concise instructions for getting them from the OpenELEC repo in his previous post:
>
> https://tvheadend.org/d/1695-august-dvb-t210?r=21206#message-21206 >
> or you can just download them from here:
>
> https://github.com/OpenELEC/dvb-firmware/tree/master/firmware >

> Adam

I did have a stick that only worked when plugged into a powered hub. After a slight mishap I fried that stick, which is why I ended up with a 230. I've now got it plugged directly into the Pi, with the pi being powered by my Wifi router USB port. I have a 2.5" drive plugged into a powered hub, and that hub into my pi.

Maybe it's just the versions. I'll try 4.0.11 and 2.1.9, and then maybe try powering the pi with a dedicated USB power socket to see if that's the issue.

Thanks for the help!

Adam Bowen

Hi Graham,

I was also very sceptical about whether it would be able to handle all of the I/O involved in being a twin tuner PVR, so I did some back-of-a-beer-mat calculations and they suggested that it could easily handle it. I've tested recording 3 HD recordings (one from one MUX and two from a different MUX) whilst playing back a recording over the network, and it handles that fine, although it really should be able to handle more channels (I just haven't been bothered trying it). If you're interested, here are the rough notes that I made at the time (and remember that these were purely for my own peace of mind before adding a second tuner, so any wrong calculations you spot are a) inconsequential as it does in fact work, and b) deliberate, to try and catch you out :P ) :

PI has one root USB port running at 480mbps A DVB-T2 MUX is approximately 40,200,039 bps == 40mbps (see comments @ https://ukfree.tv/transmitters/tv/Winter_Hill/PGSTART1220/) This is for the full MUX, not a single channel within that MUX. The T210 tuner does not support on card (hardware) demultiplexing so we have to pull the whole thing across the bus. A transport stream of 1920 x 1080 h.264 video and stereo 44khz AAC audio is approximately 8mbps (although this can be lower for other providers, but BBC top tier shows (nature stuff) uses this higher bitrate). A brief proof of that is a recording of The Hunt from BBC ONE HD. It is 60 minutes, plus 2 pre and 10 post padding. So 72 minutes, or 4320 seconds. The bitrate given by ffmpeg (ffmpeg -i The-Hunt2015-12-0621-00-S01E06.mkv) is 7948kbs. So: 4320 * 7948 / 8 = 4291920 The filesize on disk is 4293115805 so I'll go with that estimate. To record a full HD MUX from a DVB-T2 USB tuner involves: * Moving full multiplexed stream from dongle to memory: 40mbps * Demultiplexing the stream. * Moving the demultiplexed single channel stream, which will be approximately 8mbps, to a USB attached disk. So we need ~48mbps bandwidth to record a single channel from a MUX to disk. Now to record another HD channel from the same MUX only requires an additional 8mpbs write to disk as we already have the full multiplexed stream coming in to memory. To record a channel from a second MUX, on a second USB tuner, costs us the full 48mbps for the first channel and +8mpbs for each subsequent channel. Worst case is all 6 channels from each DVB-T2 mux (one on each tuner): * 40mbps * 2 = 80mbps * 8mbps * 12 = 96mbps * Total: 176mbps To play back a stream to a network attached player, requires: * Read recording from disk: 8mbps * Write recording over the network: 8mbps * Total: 16mbps In total, recording all HD channels, and watching 3 HD recordings at the same time: 224mbps This is well within the bus speed limit, but you wouldn't want to go much above this, as the USB bus is in use for other things too, general network traffic, root and home directory disk IO etc. Also there are all kinds of control messages for the USB and network traffic that haven't been taken in to account.

Happy to receive any corrections to those calculations, of course.

Adam

Graham H

Phew! You're probably right ;)

My experience of data transfer speeds in general is they are never very near the headline value, but if it works, what can I say?

As I've said elsewhere, how do people find the time to watch all this stuff, but then I don't have teenage kids.

Graham

lord slash

Hi! I Just realized that the stick I have (Geniatech MyGica T230 C) is the same as the above mentioned August T210.
Problem is that it doesn't seem to work for me so I am wondering if the C after the T230 has a meaning.

This is the output of my lsusb:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ lsusb Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0572:c689 Conexant Systems (Rockwell), Inc. Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMSC9512/9514 Fast Ethernet Adapter Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp. Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Note that the ID is 572:c689 instead of c688

The drivers dvb-demod-si2168-b40-01.fw dvb-tuner-si2158-a20-01.fw are in /lib/firmware

But then when I do dmesg the stick is not really recognized as described in the guide (I will paste only the part of dmesg that has something to do with the stick):

[ 4.014365] usb 1-1.4: new high-speed USB device number 4 using dwc_otg
[ 4.125618] usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=0572, idProduct=c689
[ 4.134539] usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 4.143739] usb 1-1.4: Product: EyeTV Stick
[ 4.149791] usb 1-1.4: Manufacturer: Geniatech
[ 4.156055] usb 1-1.4: SerialNumber: 160421

And then of course TVHeadend doesn't see any DVB-Stick.
I am using a Raspberry Pi B+ with Raspian but I also tried with a Raspberry Pi 2 and Openelec (same results).
Can you help me please?

Olli Salonen

lord slash wrote:
> Hi! I Just realized that the stick I have (Geniatech MyGica T230 C) is the same as the above mentioned August T210.
> Problem is that it doesn't seem to work for me so I am wondering if the C after the T230 has a meaning.
> This is the output of my lsusb:
>
>

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ lsusb
> Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0572:c689 Conexant Systems (Rockwell), Inc.
> Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMSC9512/9514 Fast Ethernet Adapter
> Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp.
> Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

> Note that the ID is 572:c689 instead of c688

That's a new version of the stick. Based on some googling it seems to contain Si2168-D60 demodulator, which isn't supported by the si2168 driver in Linux kernel.

Most likely adding support would not be difficult if the other parts are pretty much the same. If that would be the case, then:

1) Add D60 version in the si2168 driver. Probably the API is the same, so no need for more modifications here.
2) Rip the Si2168-D60 firmware from the Windows drivers.

3) Add the new USB ID into the existing dvb-usb-dvbsky driver.

Could probably do this in an evening if I had the stick. Is it available on AliExpress or other site?

Crazy Cat

si2168: D60 chip support - https://github.com/crazycat69/linux_media/commit/678ea7c77fa1fabc82196d2d90b0f6f8b34f824a

cxusb: Geniatech T230 with PID=0xC689 - https://github.com/crazycat69/linux_media/commit/9b764ceaab1a709b4a57a30dbe8a5b07438e9725

Si2168-D60 firmware from windows driver attached.

Now demod init ok, but look like also new tuner chip and maybe on diff i2c addr

[ 16.649236] DVB: registering new adapter (Mygica T230_1 DVB-T/T2/C)
[ 16.649240] usb 1-1.1: media controller created
[ 16.649497] dvb_create_media_entity: media entity 'dvb-demux' registered.
[ 16.659756] i2c i2c-9: Added multiplexed i2c bus 10
[ 16.659758] si2168 9-0064: Silicon Labs Si2168-D60 successfully identified
[ 16.659759] si2168 9-0064: firmware version: D 6.0.1
[ 16.664224] si2157 10-0060: Silicon Labs Si2147/2148/2157/2158 successfully attached
[ 16.664231] usb 1-1.1: DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Silicon Labs Si2168)...
[ 16.664235] dvb_create_media_entity: media entity 'Silicon Labs Si2168' registered.
[ 16.665780] input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.1/input/input16
[ 16.665867] dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 100 msecs.
[ 16.666100] dvb-usb: Mygica T230_1 DVB-T/T2/C successfully initialized and connected.
[ 16.666122] usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_cxusb
[ 46.550525] si2168 9-0064: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-demod-si2168-d60-01.fw'
[ 46.634932] si2168 9-0064: firmware version: D 6.0.1
[ 46.650184] si2157 10-0060: unknown chip version Si21128-\xffffff80\xffffff80\xffffff80 [ 46.651845] usb 1-1.1: DVB: adapter 0 frontend 0 frequency 0 out of range (42000000..870000000) [ 46.976580] si2157 10-0060: unknown chip version Si21128-\xffffff80\xffffff80\xffffff80

lord slash

thanks for your answers. I tried to copy the attached firmware in /lib/firmware but nothing changed in my dmesg output.. what else do I need or can I try?

Graham H

As Olli says above, it's not just the firmware but the drivers need updating. Crazy Cat is working on it but seems to have hit a snag. Unless you are good at hacking driver code, you will have to wait for Crazy Cat and/or Olli to sort it out. Then you may have to compile media_tree.

It will always be that way while manufacturers keep changing their components and don't bother to provide linux drivers :(

lord slash

I don't have experience but I have a stick availabe and would be happy to help as much as I can!

lord slash

Hello again! The factory who produces the stick sent me the Linux Driver for the stick. I will attach it here for you!

lord slash

now that I look at the content of the package it seems to me just the usual V4L-DVB Device Drivers package.. or am I wrong?!

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